Wireless communication systems are widely deployed to provide various communication services such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, etc. These wireless systems may be multiple-access systems capable of supporting multiple users by sharing the available system resources. Examples of such multiple-access systems include Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) systems, Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) systems, Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) systems, Orthogonal FDMA (OFDMA) systems, and Single-Carrier FDMA (SC-FDMA) systems. Wireless systems have established themselves as a growing area in the field of telecommunications. The current trends and demands are to deliver multimedia services such as voice, video, interactive games, etc., with guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS). High data transmission capability is desirable in order to support high quality multimedia services.
A wireless communication system may support multihop relay in order to improve coverage and/or performance. With multihop relay, a base station may transmit data to a subscriber station via one or more relay stations. Each relay station may receive the data from an upstream station (e.g., the base station or another relay station) and may retransmit the data to a downstream station (e.g., the subscriber station or another relay station). A transmission from one station to another station is considered as a hop. It may be desirable for each relay station to retransmit the data as efficiently as possible and in a manner that is transparent to the subscriber station.